Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Lobster Noodle Soup

I spend a lot of my time reading cookbooks and cooking magazines. This month, two recipes caught my eye. One was from Portland's own chef Joshua McFadden in Bon Appetit and the other from Dale Talde in Saveur. I recently read Dale Talde's cookbook Asian American, and I feel like I'm a better person for it. While I have a Vietnamese mom and dad, my kids have a Vietnamese mom and American dad, with a Sicilian last name. I have one daughter who is obsessed with Dutch Bros, but she has taken on pork blood in congee repeatedly. The other daughter, though, less adventurous, has been eating tripe from the dim sum cart, calling them noodles. I think she really thinks they're noodles though. Meaning that if you serve chicken tenders and french fries in your restaurant, she'll let me take her there.

I love that McFadden's Faux Lobster Pho is an Italian twist on a Vietnamese favorite. What is pho? Noodles, protein, broth, and herbs. I do things like that all the time in my home kitchen because I like to change things up. I can't wait to try McFadden's food at Ava Genes. I've been told a few times that it is the best restaurant in Portland.

So this recipe is a spin off of the two recipes. I'm using their lobster, noodles, shrimp paste, and pork to combine some of my favorite ingredients for soup in a very cool summer in the Pacific Northwest. I'm still lamenting the cost of wild caught American shrimp up here, because Barton Seaver still insists on it being the best quality shrimp in his latest cookbook. When I lived in Arkansas, I enjoyed having my own purveyor providing me the same great shrimp for half the price at our Farmers Market. Now I just rebel by buying lobster tails instead. I loved the outcome of my efforts.

Ingredients:

4 cups of shellfish shells from shrimp, crab, or lobster

4 (3 oz) lobster tails

1/2 pound of wild caught American shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/2 pound of ground pork

green onions, chopped

cilantro, finely choppped

shirataki noodles or rice noodles

shrimp paste

Directions:

Place the shells in a medium stock pot and cover with water. Add shrimp paste. Bring up to a boil, then simmer for one hour.

Run a skewer through each lobster tail, then steam for 8 minutes. Separate the meat, and cut into bite sized pieces.

Chop the shrimp, combine with the ground pork, and form small meatballs.

Strain the broth. Add the meatballs and cook until they float to the top. Add the lobster meat.

Serve the broth, lobster, and meatballs with noodles, green onions, and cilantro. Also optional, lime.

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About Me

Welcome to the Nguyen and Rasico melting pot! His roots are Sicilian, and I'm Vietnamese. We both grew up in Arkansas, but relocated to Portland, Oregon in 2014. We love all kinds of food. It's fun to write about what you love...and I love to cook. So this blogging thing is the perfect platform - it challenges me to cook good food for my family and friends. It's also great to have a place where I can refer back to recipes any time. We love to cook with ingredients from all around the globe. I worked in French, Mediterranean and Italian restaurants while putting myself through college, and it was fascinating to watch the food get cooked. My TV is always on Food Network. If not, my husband always changes the TV from ESPN to Food Network when he leaves the room for me. Then there are all the cookbooks that I pick up at the library. If they're really good, I actually purchase them from Barnes & Noble, the ultimate bookstore that sells Starbucks Caramel Lattes and comes with a children's section! All the food pictures on my blog were taken by myself, unless I note otherwise. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at thanhrasico@gmail.com. Thanks for coming by...